‘Money mule’ admits involvement after online frauds
A Christchurch woman has been told to tell the police more about the fraudster who raided people’s bank accounts and then used her bank account to launder the cash.
Nikita Margaret Ringdahl, a 29-year-old trainer, says she only knows the fraudster’s first name, and she has described the man to the police in an interview recorded on DVD.
But Christchurch District Court Judge Alistair Garland said after her guilty pleas today: “She might have to do a great deal more than that.”
Ringdahl was remanded on bail for sentencing on March 31 after pleading guilty to three charges of recklessly receiving stolen cash – amounts of $2000, $16,990, and $20,000 – in October 2014, and February 2015.
Prosecutor Sergeant Glenn Pascoe said police had received complaints from New Zealand banks in April 2015 that some customers’ banks had been compromised by unauthorised online transactions.
Funds with withdrawn from the bank accounts and then passed through the accounts of “money mules”. On November 7, 2014, an unsuspecting customer’s account had $116,000 removed.
Sergeant Pascoe detailed how funds were transferred into the accounts of Ringdahl and her partner, and withdrawals were then made.
When a bank approached her about one of the transfers, she had already taken out $2000 in cash withdrawals. The bank recovered $18,000 from her account and Ringdahl said she would return the remaining $2000 to the bank but she had not done so.
Ringdahl told the police that she had been contacted by someone who had asked permission to use the bank accounts of her and her partner in return for a $5000 payment.
Judge Garland told her: “This is serious offending.”
He asked for pre-sentence submissions by the police and Ringdahl’s lawyer, Rachel Wood, about other similar cases. “This is unusual offending. It is new style fraud, using Internet technology.”
He declined to make an order requested by the police for Ringdahl to be banned from using the Internet during her remand for sentence.
The judge said: “I suspect it is not her who used the Internet. The fraudster has used the Internet to steal money from people’s bank accounts. She has been complicit in allowing her bank account to be used to dispose of the funds fraudulently obtained.
“That’s why I suspect she knows more about the fraudster than she has told the police.”
Category: News
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